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Data is the fabric of business. Every business decision that’s made is based on “the data” and often the person weaving that fabric is the business analytics professional.
Business analytics involves taking the information culled from collected data points and creating practical, actionable steps a company can take. This can be done through data mining, statistical analysis, data aggregation and other similar tasks.
Business analytics professionals can be found performing these tasks in every industry and across all major business functions including finance, human resources, operations and marketing.
Just like a good business analytics professional, let’s dig deeper into the data to find out what makes this such a compelling career.
Business analytics is the application of data to solve business challenges and help the company make strategic business decisions.
“Business analytics professionals focus on creating solutions and solving existing challenges that are unique to the business,” Jiang Li, Ph.D., chair, M.S. in Business Analytics and lead faculty, M.S. in Data Analytics at Franklin University, says. “They explore data and utilize, manipulate and apply well-established data models based on different business scenarios to make decisions.”
Descriptive Analytics offers a look into past and current trends and patterns. While it’s often used to look at the current state of the business, it can also help provide some historical context for how the company reached its current position.
Predictive Analytics is really the nexus of analytics reporting. The data mining done here isn’t as deep but it is robust as it offers a way to visualize various sub-groups of information as you attempt to look at specific sections of the bigger picture. It’s also used as a baseline for prescriptive analytics reporting.
Prescriptive Analytics combines analytics modeling with probability matrices in an attempt to forecast future trends and market patterns. Because you’ll rely on a wide swath of information, these analytics charts will need to be continually reviewed, and potentially adjusted, as new information is made available.
Whether it’s driving operational efficiencies, informing products or services, improving customer experiences, determining pricing or other facets of business that drive competitive advantages—a business analyst is at the heart of change.
Business analysts (BAs) may help organizations answer critical questions like:
Business analytics professionals usually work with many different business roles, including more technical roles such as an engineer or data scientist and less technical roles such as managers, directors, and team leads. The knowledge that each of those roles holds is critical for business analytics professionals to learn so that they can build an in-depth understanding of the whole business. That knowledge also helps with business problem-solving which highly depends on domain knowledge.
To accomplish this highly critical and often complex work, business analysts must be able exhibit a core set of skills.Successful business analysts must be able to:
To be a successful business analytics professional you will need to master several base-level skills including:
The “X-Factor Skill” of a successful business analytics professional? Storytelling. If you can’t effectively tell the story of the data, it will be difficult to get any traction on the solutions you propose.
Melissa Schafer agrees. Schafer, the data scientist senior manager at National General Insurance Company, says “You can be the smartest person in the company, build the best models, and be an expert programmer, but if you cannot explain yourself well and facilitate understanding by leadership, then your work product will never be used.”
Are you ready to make a change?
Business analytics is a diverse career field full of opportunity. You can kick-off your career with the Business Analytics Program at Franklin University. The program provides industry-relevant curriculum with the ability to customize your learning plan through electives that align with your interests.